The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c15.27

c15.27

The art of diagnosis and of prognostic presents itself in India as a branch of the medical art, much less detached from others than in Mesopotamia. The medical diagnosis and prognostics constitute a part, as is normal in scientific medicine, of nosology and establish themselves in respect of each trouble described in its totality. It is only at a late date that special manuals of prognostic such as the Narapatijayacaryā, A.D. 1232, are met with.¹ But the big classical medical texts devote full chapters¹ to special collections of symptoms having the value of prognostics which remind us of the Accadian manual. As in the latter, which mentions twice more often the signs of the coming death than the favourable symptoms, Indian medicine is chiefly attached to the traits of incurability, the doctor being under the obligation of not taking up the useless treatment of the incurable², although according to Caraka, he must also refrain, on humanitarian grounds, from revealing too promptly the gravity of his prognostics (*Indr.*, XII, 61, 64).